Painting Fakes

If you've been following this little series on Christian politics (previous posts here , here and here ), you will see that I have been moving from optimism to critical engagement, from "cool" analysis to passionate engagement and from theory to practice.  I'm not suggesting that one is superior to the other.  I'm simply trying to paint a reasonably rounded picture.  You might also notice that all the authors are from the US - this was unintentional but at least it shows that there is more to Christian politics in the US than the Religious Right. By way of completing the journey into practice and passionate engagement, my final exhibit is Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution: Living As An Ordinary Radical.   You won't find any heavy theorising here. Claiborne is in great demand around the English-speaking world as a speaker, and has written a number of books.  This is his first, the story of his life so far, published in 2006 and re-issue

So, to continue this little series on Christian social and political engagement.   Miroslav Volf tells us that Christianity is a prophetic faith, and that our prophetic calling requires us to engage with our wider society in a manner which is neither passive not coercive.   Walter Brueggemann suggests that a prophetic ministry should open up possibilities beyond the dominant consciousness, allowing us to mourn the injustices of our society and dream of something better. Neither of them tells us how we should do this.  One way to start to think about this more practically is via Walter Wink's The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium , first published in 1999.  This is a short, accessible rendering of material from a trilogy of books Wink published between 1984 and 1992. Wink suggests that institutions, like individuals, have a spiritual as well as a physical reality.  This reality is not inherently good or evil.  Our social institutions often have a good and necessa